Honoring African-American Schoolteachers

By Kiersti Giron

It’s February—a month not only for celebrating love and Valentine’s Day, but for honoring a sphere of American history, people, and events that have often been overlooked in this land: African-American history. While I am still an early learner, I continue to be amazed at how many American heroes and sides of history are new to me. As a schoolteacher myself, I was fascinated to start learning a bit of the unique history of African-American schoolteachers when researching one of my historical novels. I thought I’d share a few tidbits with you today; this post will only touch the surface, but hopefully we will all be inspired to learn more!

Fanny Jackson Coppin, first African-American female school principal (Institute for Colored Youth, Philadelphia). Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Myrtilla Miner and the Normal School for Colored Girls

Myrtilla Miner, founder of the Normal School for Colored Girls
By Unknown - dc.gov, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

My interest in this topic was first piqued when I learned about Miss Miner and her school. In the days of American slavery, it was illegal to teach slave children to read or write, as Miss Myrtilla Miner discovered when she came from New York to teach the children of plantation owners in Mississippi in the 1840s. When she wasn’t allowed to start classes for black girls down south, she came back home determined to start a school. Despite much opposition, her Normal (teaching) School for Colored Girls opened in 1851 in Washington D.C., partly thanks to support from Rev. Henry Beecher and his cousin Harriet Beecher Stowe, who donated $1000 of the proceeds of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to starting the school.

While the school covered a broad range of subjects, from the beginning Miss Miner’s focus was on training African-American girls to become teachers themselves. By 1858, six of her students were already successful teachers in their own schools. The school faced much persecution and had to move multiple times because of it, but under various names such as Miner Normal School, the Institute for the Education of Colored Youth, and a merge with the District of Colombia Teacher’s College, it remained the primary training ground for African-American elementary schoolteachers in D.C. up through World War II. Eventually the school was incorporated with others to form the University of the District of Colombia in 1976. Of course, many other fine schools sprang up to train African-American teachers as well, as you can see in these photos.

Scotia Women's College teachers and students 1913, Presbyterian Church in the USA
By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos, No restrictions

Between the Civil War and Civil Rights

Schools for freedmen (former slaves) and their children proliferated in the decades between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement, but their dedicated African-American teachers consistently suffered from the effects of a racist system and society. Pay rates were always lower than that of white teachers, while school supplies came scant and of low-quality. Teachers could even be dismissed for belonging to the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and the National Education Association would not allow black teachers to be members.

African-American teacher prepares for promotional examination, 1938.
By New York Public Library, https://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/3110130614/
No restrictions.

Teacher Viola Duval Stewart did challenge the unequal pay for black and white teachers in Charleston in the 1940s, and with aid from Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, won. However, widespread inequality continued. Despite all obstacles, these courageous teachers persevered in making a difference in the lives of children. And make a difference they did, encouraging their dreams, affirming and fostering their value, curiosity, and intellect, just as teachers do all through the country and the world.

After Brown vs. Board of Education

Ironically, after the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that school segregation was unconstitutional, the number of African-American teachers actually went down. While black and white children now had to be integrated in schools, that meant most mainstream schools were governed by white authorities and influenced by white parents, many of whom were tragically reluctant to have black teachers for their children. In fact, of the 82,000 African-American teachers in American at the time of desegregation, 38,000 black teachers and administrators lost their jobs over the next eleven years, mostly due to the closing of all-black schools and the reluctance of other schools to hire them, even with sterling credentials. We still see the effects of this in our schools today.

Mrs. Sarah E.C. Dudley Pettey, Teacher and Treasurer
 of the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of A.M. Zion Church.
By Publisher: M.V. Lynk Publishing House
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-7557-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99, Public Domain.

In my fourth year of teaching myself, I appreciate more and more all the sacrifice and giving of teachers to young people everywhere. I’m humbled and inspired by all these teachers we’ve learned about today who have had to overcome so much more than the usual obstacles, yet persevered for the sake of their students and the generations to come. And I’m grateful for all the African-American teachers today who inspire me, but most of all their students!

Do you know much about the history of African-American schoolteachers? Any facts or tidbits you can add to our conversation today? What about a teacher who impacted your life? Please comment and share!

Kiersti Giron holds a life-long passion for history and historical fiction. She loves to write stories that show the intersection of past and present, explore relationships that bridge cultural divides, and probe the healing Jesus can bring out of brokenness. Kiersti has been published in several magazine and won the 2013 and 2018 Genesis Awards – Historical for her novels Beneath a Turquoise Sky and Fire in My Heart. An English teacher and member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Kiersti loves learning and growing with other writers penning God's story into theirs, as well as blogging at www.kierstigiron.com. She lives in California with her wonderful husband, Anthony, and their two kitties.

19th Century Schoolteacher Requirements

The one-room schoolhouse at Knotts Berry Farm

It’s August, which means school is starting soon for many of us—whether you have children in school or are a teacher like I am! While I didn’t always know I wanted to be a teacher, I grew up loving old-fashioned stories about young schoolteachers in one-room schoolhouses, like Anne Shirley in Anne of Avonlea, Laura Ingalls in These Happy Golden Years, and Christy Huddleston in Catherine Marshall’s Christy.

So this month, I thought it would be fun to look at some facts—and possible fiction—of what it took to be a schoolteacher in the 19^th century.

When my husband and sister and I visited Knotts Berry Farm a few years ago, we stepped inside the old-fashioned schoolhouse set up in the “Old West” Ghost Town section of the park. I was intrigued by a framed set of rules hanging on the wall, labeled “Rules for Teachers 1872.” The rules read as follows:

1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, trim wicks and clean chimneys.

2. Each morning teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.

3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.

4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.

5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or any other good books.

6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.

7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.

8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity, and honesty.

9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

The classic McGuffey readers, staple of 19th century one-room schools
By Tpdwkouaa - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Rather a daunting list! In researching the historicity of these rules, though they appear on numerous websites and even in a book on one-room schools, I found little firm evidence that they actually were established as the official rules of any particular district in the 19^th century. It is, however, unquestionable that teachers were expected to be paragons of moral virtue and an example to the pupils they taught.

As Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education wrote in The Common School Journal in 1841, “The school committee are sentinels stationed at the door of every school house in the State, to see that no teacher crosses its threshold, who is not clothed, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, in garments of virtue.”

This quote also hints at the fact that early schoolteachers were uniformly male. However, about this time in the 1840s, the door began to open for women to become teachers. While this “radical” idea met with some protest, many argued that not only could women be paid less than men, but they were uniquely suited for the task of teaching and nurturing children.

In fact, according to the Littleton School Committee of Littleton, Massachusetts, in 1849, “God seems to have made women peculiarly suited to guide and develop the infant mind, and it seems…very poor policy to pay a man 20 or 22 dollars a month, for teaching children the ABCs, when a female could do the work more successfully at one third of the price.”

Bichet one-room school in Marion County, Kansas
By MadameGraffigny, Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons

So, what were the requirements to become a teacher? Despite the stringent moral standards, in certain ways the educational requirements were lower than today. Some teenage girls became teachers with only the equivalent of an 8^th grade education, though we can see from Laura Ingalls’s experience that a teacher examination still had to be passed. As also seen in the Little House and Christy books and confirmed by other sources, it could be quite intimidating for a fifteen-to-nineteen-year-old girl to be faced with a classroom of fifty to sixty students of all ages and levels, especially when the “big boys” arrived during the farming off-seasons, young men often bigger, older, and stronger than the teachers.

Still, these young women persevered, and gradually helped transform education in America to be more creative, more child-centered, and more equitable in treatment and pay for male and female teachers.

So, which of the “1872 rules” for schoolteachers stand out to you most? Do they seem authentic? What else struck you about 19^th century schoolteachers? Please comment and share!

Kiersti Giron holds a life-long passion for history and historical fiction. She loves to write stories that show the intersection of past and present, explore relationships that bridge cultural divides, and probe the healing Jesus can bring out of brokenness. Kiersti has been published in several magazines, won the 2013 ACFW Genesis Award - Historical for her manuscript Beneath a Turquoise Sky, and is currently a 2018 Genesis Finalist. A high school English teacher and member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Kiersti loves learning and growing with other writers penning God's story into theirs, as well as blogging at www.kierstigiron.com. She lives in California with her wonderful husband, Anthony, and their two kitties.